


Nothing but flowers

by exquisitecorpses



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Depression, Eventual Relationships, Eventual Romance, F/M, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Slice of Life, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:22:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27480412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/exquisitecorpses/pseuds/exquisitecorpses
Summary: There have been much harder jobs. What was so different about this one?  MacCready contemplates his newest gig.
Relationships: Female Sole Survivor/Nick Valentine, Robert Joseph MacCready/Female Sole Survivor
Comments: 8
Kudos: 12





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Slow burn F!Sole Survivor/MacCready, with eventual F!Sole Survivor/Hancock and F!Sole Survivor/Deacon to keep things interesting. 
> 
> Hoping to make this a multi-chapter story that I will (fingers crossed) update weekly. I work full-time, but I'm gonna do my best; I love these characters, and I have an arc in mind, if not an ending. 
> 
> No beta, so apologies for any mistakes. Everything belongs to Bethesda and I'm just happy to play in the sandbox.

MacCready gnawed on a fingernail and looked over his shoulder for the twelfth time.

“Quit it,” she said. She didn’t even look at him, just kept stirring the pot simmering over the cookfire. “You have any idea where that’s been?”

Instinctively, if a little resentfully, he dropped his hand to his side, and suppressed a sigh. He never should have mentioned anything about trying to quit biting his nails. She wasn’t obnoxious about it; truth be told, he was a little flattered by the attention, which was in itself annoying.

Oblivious to his consternation, the boss lifted the spoon to taste, pouring in a little wine, tasting again, like she was on some pre-war cooking vid and not in the middle of an alley they’d taken from raiders less than 24 hours ago, shotgun-busted turret still smoking, some three blocks away from a super mutant den. _Easy money_ , he remembered thinking when he first met her. What a chump.

“Okay, I think we’re about ready.” She ladled something into a couple of chipped bowls and handed him one with a silver spoon tucked into a cloth napkin. Was this how people used to live? The sheer excess, a piece of cloth whose sole purpose was to clean stuff off your face when you ate.

The boss had all kinds of weird habits like this, but MacCready wasn’t about to ask questions. She looked soft, but he’d seen her pop the heads off Fat Man-wielding raiders with a .44, pick through their pockets while the bodies were still warm. He wasn’t about to judge her, either. His body count was high enough. Out here, you didn’t stay alive long without leaving a trail behind you – at least, that’s what he told himself.

Whatever she’d handed him smelled delicious. She cooked for them whenever she could, and it was always way better than the tinned shit he was used to eating. Shit. Crap. Shit — whatever. He’d promised Duncan he’d stop cussing, but cussing happened out loud, and he didn’t say anything about cleaning up his inner monologue.

Growing up in Little Lamplight, he had subsisted on whatever the kids could steal or scavenge. Sometimes that crazy Vault woman with the Power Armor would leave stuff for them. Dented cans of Cram, boxes of InstaMash. And the Gunners were usually too chem-crazed to have an appetite for anything besides blood and caps, in that order. The only person who’d ever cooked for him was Lucy, and Lucy –

He didn’t want to think about Lucy right now.

“It’s vegetable soup,” she said, settling down cross-legged across from him. “I guess. I mean, there’s a carrot in there.”

He took an experimental spoonful, then another, then another. It was … really good. She ate slowly, pausing now and again, while he all but shoved the whole bowl in his mouth.

She watched him, amused. “I guess I’ll make brahmin broth again.”

When only a few spoonfuls remained, MacCready gave up on decorum and lifted it to his lips, drinking the rest straight from the bowl. With some surprise, he watched her do the same, fingers tented delicately beneath her bowl. Somehow, when she did it, it looked refined.

MacCready lifted his sleeve to his lips before remembering the napkin. He picked it up, abashed, and wiped his chin clumsily. “Man, that was good.”

“Yeah, not bad, right?” She dabbed at the corners of her mouth with her own napkin. “Want a drink?”

“Always.” MacCready pulled a cigarette from his hat and lit it off the cooking fire. She poured wine from the bottle she’d been cooking with into some coffee cups and handed him one.

“Cheers.” They clinked mugs and sipped in silence for a bit. MacCready passed the cigarette to her. She closed her eyes, took a long drag, and handed it back. He watched the smoke drift from between her full lips and wind around her head like a halo.

“Maybe noodles next time.”

MacCready tore his eyes from her mouth a little guiltily. “What?”

“The soup. Maybe I’ll add noodles next time. If I can find some.”

“Like at Power Noodles.”

She handed the cigarette back to him and topped off their mugs with the last of the wine. “What’s Power Noodles?”

MacCready watched her screw the cap back on the empty bottle and stash it in her bag and shook his head. This woman and her obsession with trash. “It’s in Diamond City. Just this little counter where you can get a huge bowl of noodles made by a Protectron in a chef’s hat.” At that, she laughed, which made him grin. “It’s great,” he added.

“Can’t believe I’ve never been. Protectron in a chef’s hat.” She shook her head, still smiling a little. She downed the rest of her wine and set about wiping the mug clean. “Well, we should stop there, then. I have some business in Diamond City.”

“Business?”

“Yeah.”

He waited for her to elaborate. She didn’t. He finished his wine too, and she reached out a hand to take his mug. She gave it a quick swipe with the napkin in her hand and stood up.

The cooking fire sat beside an open shack with a steel shelf and a small, low table. She set the mugs on the table and started to unroll her sleeping bag beside it.

“I think there’s a proper bed in that shack over there,” she inclined her head. “If you want.” She smoothed out the sleeping bag and stood upright, slotting a few more bullets into her pistol. “I can take first watch.”

MacCready just nodded. He was bone tired, too tired to pretend to argue, and anyway, he would have a better vantage point from the elevated shack if things got hairy. “Whatever you say, boss.” He cleared his throat, and she looked him. “Uh, thanks. For dinner.”

The corners of her lips lifted almost imperceptibly, and she nodded. Feeling a little foolish, he turned before he could do something stupid like blush or try to speak more and made his way up the shack steps.

The filthy mattress groaned in protest when he sat down. He leaned his rifle against the wall and removed his hat, setting it on the trunk beside him. Down below, he could see her crouched near the alley entrance, setting up a tripwire. They usually traded watches, but she didn’t seem to sleep much.

MacCready liked to think he was good at his job for a couple important reasons. One, he never ran out of ammo. Two, he didn’t ask a lot of questions. But he couldn’t help his curiosity about this strange woman who, despite traveling with her for over a month now, he knew almost nothing about.

When he met her that night at the Third Rail, he’d been so distracted by that infuriating run-in with Winlock and Barnes that he barely registered her presence. When he finally did, he was embarrassed to recall he didn’t think much beyond that she looked good in red. Like, really good. She stood there in her sequined dress with her arms crossed and a pistol dangling from a loose grip, leaning against the wall like she was waiting for something.

As it turned out, she was waiting for him.

You had to wonder at the timing. MacCready didn’t believe in fate. The best you could count on was being in the right place at the right time, and MacCready couldn’t shake the feeling that he was born under some unlucky star, destined always for the wrong place, the wrong time, and never enough of whatever he needed to get a goddamn leg up.

Still, there was something uncanny about how she seemed to appear right when he was about to give into despair and drink himself blind. He hadn’t actually thought he could get two fifty from her up front. He just wanted to see what she’d do, see if she was serious, so when she agreed to two hundred, he almost accepted right then.

“How do I know I won’t end up with a bullet in my back?” he'd asked.

She'd just twirled the pistol idly on one finger. A .44, heavily modded. “You don’t,” she'd said, and shrugged. “That’s all part of the risk, right?”

That was when he knew he was always going to say yes. Don’t call it fate — call it recklessness, call it desperation, whatever. The fact remained he was always going to walk out that door with her and spend every waking minute he didn’t spend worrying about Duncan wondering why.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Light breakfast, not so light conversation. MacCready learns a little more about his employer.

MacCready trudged down the shack steps, rubbing the sleep from his eyes with one hand, straightening his cap with the other. The boss was back at the fire, whipping something in a metal bowl with a fork, a checkered napkin draped over one arm. He could hear gunfire in the distance, but Hangman’s Alley was quiet except for the crackle of the fire, the soft clatter of metal on metal.

“Morning.”

She looked up at him. “Morning. How’d you sleep?”

“Like the dead. What are you making?”

She emptied the bowl into the pan, a greenish yellow blob that took the pan’s shape but only just. The mixture appeared suspect but as the edges of the blob solidified, an aroma wafted up that wasn’t terrible. “Mirelurk egg omelettes.” She stifled a yawn.

MacCready studied her as she tipped the pan from side to side. Purple half-moons floated beneath her dark eyes. “Did you sleep at all?”

She shrugged. “Not really.” She jiggled the pan and the eggs folded over onto themselves. She pulled a combat knife from the thigh holster slung over her olive pants and, after wiping the blade on the napkin, sliced it into two neat halves and slid each into a bowl. “Cheers,” she said, handing him a bowl and a fork.

MacCready took a cautious bite of egg. Pretty good, honestly. He wolfed the rest down without ceremony. “Man, a guy could get used to this.”

The boss chuckled. “Yeah, they sure used to.” She popped the last of her breakfast in her mouth and took his bowl with hers, wiping them both out with the napkin and stashing it all back in the bag.

Before he could ask her what she meant, she spoke. “I figured we’d head for Diamond City today.”

“For your business.”

She nodded. Predictably, she didn’t elaborate.

MacCready’s eyes narrowed. True, he tried not to ask too many questions. Then again, he was beginning to wonder if this was because in his experience, he had never needed to ask. People, as a rule, could not keep their mouths shut. A couple of beers and inevitably, their life story came tumbling out, replete with heroes and villains, tortured parental relationships and lost loves.

Except her. He didn’t even know her name.

_All right, boss, what do I call you?_ he’d asked.

_Boss is good,_ she’d said, with a crooked half-smile, and left it at that.

He’d left it, too, just took her for another gunned up drifter with her own secrets. But on their way out of Goodneighbor, she told him she had some raider dens she needed help cleaning out. _For the Minutemen_ , she’d said. He didn’t know the Minutemen were even a thing anymore. The irony of working – even indirectly – for a ragtag band of armed altruists vainly trying to clean up the Commonwealth when he’d spent the years since Lucy’s death killing indiscriminately of anything but how many caps were on the other side didn’t escape him.

And maybe it was his shame that prevented him from probing further – or maybe it was that he didn’t actually think they’d live through any of it – that maybe, in his darkest heart of hearts, he kind of hoped he wouldn’t – at least he knew why they were doing it. Some sad two-bit farm was one raid away from being burned to the ground, or someone’s kid got the brilliant idea to join the Forged and ran off with a family heirloom. Shoot the raiders, save the farm, bring back the sword (and, yeah, the kid), repeat. Not that she was especially forthcoming with information about those jobs either - "raiders" was usually the heft of it - but she had never been this tight lipped before, either. What was she hiding?

He took a leap. “What kind of business?”

“Personal business.”

“Of course. Personal business.” MacCready couldn’t keep the sour note out of his tone. He looked away from her and busied himself searching for a cigarette.

She raised an eyebrow. “Something wrong?”

A flush crept into his cheeks. “Listen, you don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to,” he said, a little defensively. “I don’t give a damn what the job is, as long as I get paid.” He felt bad immediately, but the woman made it… very hard to stop swearing.

“Good,” she said shortly, and stood, withdrawing her pistol. MacCready froze, but she turned away from him. “We leave in an hour,” she said over her shoulder, and stalked off through the cut of shacks.

MacCready’s temper flared, indignation prickling the back of his neck. He stood with a huff. He had the mad urge to follow her, and really give it to her: about how it wasn’t such a goddamn crime to want a little information, how he wasn’t an idiot, he’d been around the block once or twice before and had she ever considered his input might actually be _valuable_ —

But what would be the point? His shoulders sagged. Whatever had him so wound up — was it worth it? She kept him fed and watered and stimmed when he needed it. She threw him extra caps on top of his share of each take, and made sure they rested every night with their heads covered. Duncan was out there, motherless and basically fatherless and scared, skin festering in boils. Until MacCready showed back up with a cure, it would be that way until it wasn’t. If this fucked up disease, whatever it was, claimed his son – _Lucy’s_ son – MacCready didn’t know what he’d do.

**

She stood at the workbench, arms braced on either side. If she noticed him approach, she showed no sign of it. She was staring down at her pistol like she was trying to move it with her mind, her face impossibly sad. Then she seemed to shake herself, and the cool, implacable mask returned. The morning sun washed the alley in white light, winking off the shoulder greave she wore strapped over her worn leather jacket. She’d repaired the turret sometime overnight and positioned it around the corner from the workbench, where it sat, puttering like a heart, covering the blind side of the alley opposite where they— well, where _he_ had slept.

After a minute or two, she pushed the pistol to the side and pulled her bobby pin case off her belt, along with a frayed pouch she emptied unceremoniously onto the table. He watched her sort through the pile, pulling out bobby pins, bottle caps, separating the valuable from the junk. He had never seen her wear such a naked expression, and though her face was inscrutable once more, he noticed her hands were trembling.

He took a deep breath. He lit a cigarette and held it out towards her. She finally glanced at him. She looked at the cigarette, then back up at him. He shrugged. “You look like you could use it.”

She smiled wryly. “Thanks.” She accepted the offering and took a long drag. After a moment, she leaned down, withdrew a comic book from her pack, and extended it to him. “You collect these, right? Do you have this one already?”

His eyes lit up. Grognak the Barbarian, Issue 2, _Cometh the Trickster_. “No, I – “ _I’ve been looking for it everywhere_ , he was about to say, but he didn’t want to sound like some little kid. “No, I don’t have this one.”

“Well, you do now.”

MacCready squinted at her. “Are you sure?” What, was she buttering him up or something?

“I find them sometimes. Found this one near the old brewery. It was in this abandoned house… I wondered if it had been a kid’s bedroom.” She paused, and took another drag on the cigarette. There was a long pause. Then she spoke again, her voice flat and quiet. “I had a son."

MacCready gaped at her. _A son?_ Of course, he’d noticed the wedding ring. It didn’t matter. _It’s a job, he reminded himself_. He thought of Duncan.

She continued. “He would have been too little for these, but I always wondered…” she trailed off and let out a shuddering sigh. “I don’t know why I keep thinking about him in the past tense. He could still be alive.” She blinked rapidly, eyes fixed on the ground, then looked back up at him. “Anyway. Sorry. This is yours, if you want it.”

He took the thin booklet from her hand tentatively. “Thanks… thanks, boss.”

“June,” she murmured. He looked at her, confused. “My name,” she clarified. “It’s June. I mean, you can keep calling me boss, if you want.” A rueful laugh escaped her. “But my name is June.” She paused. “I’m sorry. I don’t know how this works,” she said, a pained expression twisting her soft features.

“How what works?” he said, carefully.

“Anything,” she said bitterly. She rubbed her temples. “Trusting people.” She scrubbed a hand over her face. “I didn’t hire you to be my friend,” she said quickly, as if embarrassed. Her cheeks pinked. “But you should at least know what you’re walking into. Who you’re walking into it with. There’s a guy in Diamond City. A detective. Nick Valentine. He’s been helping me follow a few leads. I was traveling with him for a while, but he’s got an agency to attend to. And I…” she trailed off.

This was the most he’d heard her speak since taking up with her. Some insane part of him wanted to reach out, comfort her somehow, but what did he know about comfort? With her hunched shoulders, she looked poised to sprout wings and fly away.

“I can’t do this alone,” she said finally. “So I hired you.”

MacCready nodded slowly. “Okay,” he said. “June. That’s… that’s real pretty, boss.” At that, she smiled, and he blushed. He didn’t know if he was ever going to be able to call her anything but _boss_. “Thanks, uh… thanks for telling me.”

“Thanks for coming along for the ride.” After an awkward moment, she cut her gaze away from him back to the workbench. “Let me clean this shit up and we’ll go. You ready?”

MacCready had no idea how to answer her, so he just nodded. “As I’ll ever be."


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> June's perspective.

The full moon wore a halo bright enough to cut through the irradiated haze overhead and the sky almost looked normal, June thought, almost, if you didn’t look too hard. She took another sip of her Bobrov’s Best and exhaled. It was late, and she had the whole booth outside the Dugout Inn to herself.

She could only assume MacCready was sound asleep. Vadim had greeted him like an old friend, given them a good price on a couple of rooms, and the three of them had put away four bottles of the moonshine scalding her insides at the moment. Even without booze, MacCready seemed capable of sleeping through just about anything if his head was covered. If he snored in a makeshift tent, she imagined he was all but comatose now, drunk in a bed in a room with a door he could shut.

June figured she’d slept enough for two lifetimes at least. She’d never slept easily – not as a child, certainly not during law school, not even with Nate beside her. The dreams were always too much – too thick, too full – of faces from the past, conversations that could have happened, sensations that felt so _real_. Mornings she woke confused – _did that happen? Did I rollerskate down the train tracks, did I turn into a wolf, did Nate say that, was that real, was that real, what is real?_

It was hardest when she got pregnant. Couldn’t smoke. Couldn’t drink. She was eating, sleeping, coping for four: her better self; her actual self; Nate; and the beansprout in the lowest part of her belly, incomprehensibly small for the scope of its needs. Still, she was determined. Whatever she couldn’t do for herself, she’d do for the little bundle of cells replicating and generating inside her.

Once she was far enough along, sleep was impossible. Getting comfortable, impossible, around the swell of her belly, the rest of her body churning to make food, make water, make room.

Nate had been good. Came home with bags of Dandy Boy Apples and raspberries, potato crisps; didn’t say anything about that week when all she wanted was frozen pizza and gravy from a packet. He’d stayed out of the delivery room at her behest, but passed snacks from the waiting room to her sister to bring her: carrot sticks, peanut butter crackers, frozen grapes by the quart bag. Sixteen hours of labor. He wept when he saw her, sweat sheened and exhausted and holding onto Shaun for dear life. He wept harder when she let him hold him for the first time, and she teased him for crying all over the baby. _They just cleaned him off and now you’re snotting all over his head!_

That night, sleep finally, finally came, deep and dark, long, endless. What had MacCready said? _Like the dead_.

Who was MacCready’s dead? In this life, everyone had their dead. Grief was common as a cold pre-war and just as mundane. It wasn’t a question of _if_ , only a question of _how much_.

She wished she had a cigarette. She and MacCready had smoked the last upon arrival over a few drinks with Vadim. After giving her a once over, Vadim had asked after someone named Lucy, and MacCready’s cocksure posture wilted. _She didn’t make it,_ was all he had to say before Vadim was pulling down glasses and shooing them to a table in the corner, the sorrow on his face unmistakable.

MacCready didn’t look at her when they sat down, just pulled his battered coat a little tighter around him and stared down at the table until Vadim joined them. They’d reminisced a little, traded names June couldn’t hope to know, but she lost herself in their stories anyway.

What else had she missed, all those years in stasis underground? One moment, bombs were hurtling across the sky, decimating her neighbors’ houses, and it was all she could do to keep pace with Nate just ahead of her, running to the vault with Shaun in his arms. Two hundred years later, she’d awoken, paralyzed in a cryogenic pod she’d been told by some slick suited-up Vault Tec rep was a decontamination chamber, to see her husband shot in the head by a hard faced man with empty eyes while white-coated figures walked off with her baby, only to fall into stasis once more. Another fifty or so years, and here she was, wandering a world wherein her recent present was so far past, everyone she met now talked about her time like it was prehistoric.

They weren’t wrong. The bomb had leveled everything. It was the sort of thing she and her friends would theorize about in grad school, passing a joint back and forth, discussing the ills of mankind, how people were possibly the worst thing that could have happened to the planet. _We should be wiped out_ , someone would inevitably suggest _. Clean start_.

The kind of thing you could only say high on grass and comfortable twenty-something cynicism. _Clean start_. These conversations always happened in some dimly lit living room, everyone sprawled across plush carpet, dangling off soft, stuffed couches, half-eaten cheese plate on a coffee table, someone’s cat stretching in a corner, choosing laps to sit on, then flee to chase a bug or shadow.

June hadn’t seen many cats lately, and the bugs, well. She could put down a radroach in a single shot by now, but gone were the days of trapping a spider under the glass to set it free. At the tail end of the longer hikes, she daydreamed about cheese, grapes, her favorite perfume in a beveled crystal bottle with a silk-lined atomizer, a bubble bath with a scented candle and a bottle of wine. Most of the couches she’d seen in the Commonwealth were moldering in the ruins of old housing developments, stained with piss and blood and the most corrosive of all, time.

There was nothing clean about any of this. She’d killed that hard-faced man, Kellogg. Landed the final blow with the last round in her pistol. Then she’d taken his, and his clothes, too, left him to rot there naked in Fort Hagen. She etched a little S into the receiver of the Magnum and it had become, perhaps perversely, her favorite. She wore his fatigues, his leather jacket. Hers now.

After all, Kellogg had taken something of hers. He’d taken _so much_ of hers. And she was never going to forget, whether she wanted to or not.

June had come to understand, too, that she didn’t want to forget.

What else was keeping her alive but the past? Why else move forward? Shaun, of course – but he was with the Institute, whatever the hell they were, and that was according to his kidnapper. She’d walked through enough of Kellogg’s memories at the Memory Den to understand he was a man without loyalty, so from that perspective, he had no reason to lie, but he had no reason to tell the truth, either. And June couldn’t afford to count on anything. Least of all the word of some murdering bastard.

Some murdering bastard, who she’d murdered. And liked it.

No, nothing clean about any of this at all.

Listening to MacCready and Vadim, she realized she’d been starving for some tether to this present besides vengeance. It frightened her, what she was willing to do in the name of revenge, how it sustained her. She basked in their inside-jokes, drank in the unfamiliar names, let it all wash over her. Clean start.

Who was Lucy?

Honestly, it didn’t matter. He was too young for her.

Then again, it was impossible to tell how old anyone was out here, so she was careful not to voice her assumptions. For all she knew, he was a well-preserved seventy. But the way MacCready’s eyes had lit up when she’d brought out the reconciliation Grognak comic, she had to guess he was in his twenties, tops. Before the war, she had been thirty. There had been a time when thirty had seemed ancient to her, when thirty was when you had to have it all figured out. Strictly speaking, she was over two hundred years old now, and whatever the fuck she’d figured out, it wasn’t much and changing every day.

She sighed and took another swig from the bottle.

Nick would have a cigarette.

She eyed the bottle. It was still about two-thirds full, and Nick was unlikely to join her, anyway, but he would definitely smoke with her. And it wasn’t like he slept.

June stood clumsily and nearly dropped the bottle. “Oops.” She made her way unsteadily around the corner towards Valentine’s Detective Agency. The neon red heart flickered and hummed, drawing her toward it like a moth. She rapped on the door.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An interlude with Nick.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little Nick/Sole Survivor here, mostly one-sided on Nick's part, which I didn't expect when I started this story, but honestly, who could resist him?

When the door finally opened a crack, she was leaning on the wall, trying her best to appear sober.

“You keep some funny hours.” Nick’s voice was dry but warm underneath.

“Got a smoke?” She lifted the bottle. “I’ll share.”

Nick rolled his amber eyes. “I’ll give you as many smokes as you like, under one condition – that you _don’t_ share.” It was June’s turn for an eyeroll. “Just gimme a minute, I’ll meet you outside, or Ellie’ll have a fit.”

The door shut, and June closed her eyes. She opened them with a snap when the door popped open moments later, and Nick squeezed out, lighting two cigarettes and handing one to her. “Classy,” she remarked, taking it from his metal fingers. “Thanks.”

“Yeah, yeah, don’t get used to it.” She laughed at that, and Nick smiled, despite himself. She inclined her head for him to follow, and he let her lead him to the alley outside the Dugout. They slid into a booth and she offered him the bottle. After a moment, he relented, took a quick swig and handed it back to her with a wince. “Vadim’s really cornered the market on poison that won’t kill ya, that’s for sure.”

“Fussy synth.” She took a sip and set it down between them. “How are things?”

“Can’t complain. I gotta say, everything feels a hell of a lot slower after walking around with you for a while.” He studied her, took in the fresh scratches on her cheeks, the getup she must have pulled off of Kellogg, the dark pads under her eyes. “How are you holding up?”

She shrugged. He saw her eyes flick to the bottle again, but she made no move to grab it. She just took another drag of the cigarette.

Nick knew better by now to try to force an answer out of June. If she didn’t want to answer a question, she simply wouldn’t. Sometimes she’d bust out the charm so bright you didn’t realize she was deflecting until it was too late; sometimes a steel door would drop behind her eyes to warn her interrogator against further questioning, but no matter what, June never spoke unless she had something she wanted to say. Her stubbornness was as comforting as it could be infuriating. Maybe it was wishful thinking, but sometimes she reminded him of himself. At any rate, he had a newfound appreciation for Ellie’s seemingly limitless forbearance with his moods.

He tried another tack. “Well, any leads?”

Another shrug. This time, she did reach for the bottle, flicked the top off with a thumb with a glassy _thunk_ , and paused with her fingers around the neck. “Guess I’m headed for the Glowing Sea.” She took another drink, and held the bottle out to him. He took it in his mechanical hand and took a shallow swallow, setting it down beside him. She raised an eyebrow. Of course, she saw right through him, and he rolled his golden eyes, pushed it back across the table at her.

“That’s gonna be quite the hike,” he said. “You’re gonna come back green.”

She laughed. “Can you imagine? _Hi honey, it’s your mom, I’m a super mutant now_.”

“We’ll need to come up with a code phrase, so I know it’s you.”

“Horse’s ass,” she suggested, and it was Nick’s turn to laugh. “In case the power armor fails.”

“Ah, so you’ve got a plan?” He stubbed his cigarette out in the ashtray in front of him. She was smoking hers down to the filter, so he withdrew the pack and handed her another. She thanked him with a wink, and lit the fresh one off the near-butt, which she crushed in the ashtray beside his.

“Sort of. I mean, the power armor is most of it. I need to get it in shape first, stock up on RadAway.” She sighed. “It’s gonna take… a while.”

He nodded. “It always does.” He regarded her for a moment. “Who’s watching your back these days?”

“Why, you miss me?”

“Every day, kid.” He paused. “Really, though – you’re not chasing these ghosts alone…?”

“Nah, I picked up a kid in Goodneighbor. Merc. Good with a sniper rifle.” At his expression, she grinned. “Oh, come on. I _hired_ him. Don’t worry, I don’t like him half as much you.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about,” he huffed, but still, she was smirking at him. “Oh, wipe that look off your face. I just want to make sure you’re safe out there.”

Her face softened a little. “I know.” She ran a finger around the lip of the bottle and took another pull on the cigarette. “I’m okay.” She shrugged. “He knows what he’s doing. I found him at the Third Rail. MacCready. You heard of him?

Nick shook his head. “Doesn’t necessarily mean anything, though. If you trust him…”

“I didn’t say anything about that.” She took a last drag off the cigarette and stubbed it out in the ashtray to join the other two. “He seems fine, for now.”

Nick nodded. “So long as you’re alright.”

When Nick had joined up with June, she was wandering around in a bright blue Vault jumpsuit fraying under a bunch of mismatched leather bits and bobs, half-feral and armed with some pipe pistol monstrosity that, when he’d hazarded to ask, he’d received a snarled “ _it’s custom_ ” and that was the end of that, or really any conversation. She’d busted his door down with a story about a murdered husband and a lost son – quotidian for the Commonwealth, but the fire in her eyes, the burr in her voice that roughened the need underneath – how could he not pick up her case? She needed him.

And yet, despite the urgency of her circumstances, she found time to run after the shadows dogging his steps to illuminate his past. They’d tied up some loose ends on open cases, found Marty’s golden grasshopper and took in a spectacular view, then set off across the Commonwealth in search of Eddie’s tapes, piecing together the story of the human Nick Valentine whose memories the synth Nick walked around with still.

It took them six months. She earned enough caps to shed the Vault suit for something more practical, and if she didn’t sleep more, over the course of those months, she’d started smiling now and again. It was another thing they shared, a tendency to, when things got tough, help someone else, focus on their problems for a while. Once, he’d asked her, _Are you sure you wouldn’t rather be focusing on – your own thing right now?_ She’d shrugged. _It’ll keep_ , she’d said. _This is important_.

It gutted him. He didn’t expect it to, but it gutted him, to stand before Jennifer Lands’ grave, the borrowed memories flooding his system. The human Nick Valentine had loved her with a fierceness, a low smolder, with his whole body. The synth Nick Valentine felt it all. The tidal wave of catharsis, how little fireworks of joy burst through the grief: memories of meeting Jenny, holding Jenny, loving Jenny – was it his, though? Just because he hosted these feelings, did he have claim to them?

_Does it matter?_ That’s what she’d asked him, in a voice gentler than he’d ever heard her use. _We’re here_.

_We’re here._

Nick was never sure which feelings were his and which were memories, but in that moment, he loved her.

She couldn’t offer him answers for his past – no one could, but in a few words, she’d handed him the present, and in so doing, handed him the future. And he would love her for that, always, whether he ever said so or not.

And he’d come to need her, too, he realized. Needed her case, the purpose it gave him. Needed whatever it is was about her that made him feel like a person.

Nick coughed. “So what’s in the Glowing Sea?”

She sighed. “Oh, I don’t fucking know.” She looked down at her hands, then back up at him, a lock of dark hair falling into her eyes. “Some scientist who used to work for the Institute. I have no idea what he’s doing out there, but he might have some idea how I can find Shaun.”

Nick nodded. She continued, “Once I’m ready to head out there… like I said, I need to punch up my power armor. And… it’s a long way. But…”

“Listen, kid,” Nick leaned across the table. “If you need me, I’m there.”


End file.
